Monday, March 12, 2012

On the road: SF x LA

Filling station: Love's

“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road: The Original Scroll 

Love's Travel Store. The necessary evil of road trips circa 2012. We filled up the tank somewhere on I5 just as this tanker filled Love's tanks. Whoa. Fuel. There's a lot of it getting burnt up in these parts, somewhere between SF and LA, day 1 of the Local Music Vibe trip to Austin. Poet Karen Hildebrand alerted me to the fact that March 12 is even Jack Keroac's birthday, a befitting time to take in some tarmac.
Things have certainly changed since Jack's time (he published On the Road in 1951). There are 1 million more public road miles and the US population has more than doubled so the West feels less wild and wooly than ever.  But the meaning of going on the road — that potential finding of something that you wouldn't have found if you didn't leave or having some sort of epiphany— really hasn't changed.  And so I always get excited about setting out ...even if it means a lot of hours of car time. Even if the first leg is all familiar ground!
 I'm not sure what Jack drove, and riding in a Econoline has a whole different flavor than, say, a Cadillac. There are more logistics given the van is full of music gear and our day's journey was to end on the outskirts of LA proper. So we didn't go cruising the Sunset Strip or other Hollywood musician haunts. Nor did the timing work for a stop at Kulak's Woodshed, my vote for coolest open mic in LA.  Nonetheless, and most importantly, we made it to our destination safely.


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